Massages or (far worse) manual therapy on the neck can lead to a dissection, spasm,etc. of the vertaebral arteries - they are in the back of the neck, fairly vulnerable and sadly lead to real nasty strokes that often lead to major paralysis or death a lot of the real critical tissues in the brain are supplied by them and clots as well as tissuetend to find their way into the basilar artery which is basically the worst place for them to be.
The brain can compensate for a lot,especially when it comes to the cortex, but back there, structures are small, tend not to have “collateral” aka backup but are very important.
The type of symptoms and paralysis he has makes it very likely for him to have suffered from something in that area and well…
Manual therapy and massage in that area are the absolute posterboy reason for someone to have these strokes, especially in a comparably young age.
I saw 18 year olds have debilitating strokes that way. I had a 28 year old woman go from "talking to me to brain death/organ donor* within 45 minutes.
(BTW: Covid is another huge risk factor,but that affects more the venous side of that area. The vaccination does massively reduce these cases,especially in woman on hormonal birth control).
There is a reason why in a lot of European countries a massage of the neck is forbidden/considered malpractice by massage therapists (beside it not helping much anyway - muscular cervical pain almost always is caused lower, in the shoulder muscles) and manual therapy of the neck above C4 needs special training for physios (and even then is discouraged).
Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming the massage therapist - One would need to see the MRI for that- but it is a reasonably good reminder of a common cause for these cases.
I can speak to the chiropractor portion in particular. A risk of chiropractic manipulation of the neck is injury to the vertebral arteries - a pair of arteries running alongside the spine in the neck and which supply much of the blood to your brain stem and the back part of your brain (particularly areas that are responsible for coordination of movement and vision).
Injury to either artery can result in a stroke in these parts of the brain. It’s not just theoretical, I personally have seen patients who had these sort of strokes following chiropractic manipulation.
I’m guessing OP was inferring that too vigorous of a neck massage could cause the same problem though I haven’t actually seen that.
Huh? How so?
Massages or (far worse) manual therapy on the neck can lead to a dissection, spasm,etc. of the vertaebral arteries - they are in the back of the neck, fairly vulnerable and sadly lead to real nasty strokes that often lead to major paralysis or death a lot of the real critical tissues in the brain are supplied by them and clots as well as tissuetend to find their way into the basilar artery which is basically the worst place for them to be. The brain can compensate for a lot,especially when it comes to the cortex, but back there, structures are small, tend not to have “collateral” aka backup but are very important.
The type of symptoms and paralysis he has makes it very likely for him to have suffered from something in that area and well… Manual therapy and massage in that area are the absolute posterboy reason for someone to have these strokes, especially in a comparably young age. I saw 18 year olds have debilitating strokes that way. I had a 28 year old woman go from "talking to me to brain death/organ donor* within 45 minutes. (BTW: Covid is another huge risk factor,but that affects more the venous side of that area. The vaccination does massively reduce these cases,especially in woman on hormonal birth control).
There is a reason why in a lot of European countries a massage of the neck is forbidden/considered malpractice by massage therapists (beside it not helping much anyway - muscular cervical pain almost always is caused lower, in the shoulder muscles) and manual therapy of the neck above C4 needs special training for physios (and even then is discouraged).
Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming the massage therapist - One would need to see the MRI for that- but it is a reasonably good reminder of a common cause for these cases.
I can speak to the chiropractor portion in particular. A risk of chiropractic manipulation of the neck is injury to the vertebral arteries - a pair of arteries running alongside the spine in the neck and which supply much of the blood to your brain stem and the back part of your brain (particularly areas that are responsible for coordination of movement and vision).
Injury to either artery can result in a stroke in these parts of the brain. It’s not just theoretical, I personally have seen patients who had these sort of strokes following chiropractic manipulation.
I’m guessing OP was inferring that too vigorous of a neck massage could cause the same problem though I haven’t actually seen that.